Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Romania's Government adopted Emergency Ordinance nr. 8/2026 on 24 February 2026, published in the Official Gazette (Monitorul Oficial) nr. 147 of 25 February 2026 and entering into force 1 March 2026, committing a EUR 5 billion (~RON 25 bn) horizontal economic-recovery and productive-investment envelope through 2032 structured around nine state-aid schemes, a 200% corporate R&D expense deduction (High-Tech Research Schema), a RON 1 bn Investment and Development Bank (BID) recapitalization, and a RON 1 bn EximBank export-credit allocation. The ordinance frames Romania's pivot "from consumption to investments as the engine of economic growth" and establishes a Strategic Investment tier (minimum RON 1 bn project value) qualifying for the highest-intensity state-aid eligibility, while introducing a 3% tax-compliance bonus and asset-expensing threshold raised to RON 5,000.

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 70 million loan with German drone manufacturer Quantum Systems GmbH, financing the company's 2025-2028 research, development and innovation programme in unmanned aerial systems. The EIB loan sits inside a EUR 150 million total financing package alongside Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and KfW, publicly announced by the EIB on 12 February 2026. It is the EIB's second direct investment in the company, following a EUR 10 million commitment in June 2021, and is framed explicitly around building European defence and technological-sovereignty capacity in unmanned systems.

On 6 February 2026 Brazil's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) and the federal innovation-financing agency FINEP (Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos) launched Round 2 of the "Mais Inovação Brasil" call for the defence sector, committing BRL 300 million (~USD 56.9 million) in non-reimbursable economic-subsidy funding. Companies may apply under two thematic lines — "National Defence Technologies" or "Economic Sustainability for the Defence Industrial Base (BID)" — for projects with high technical uncertainty aligned with strategic defence priorities, in exchange for a financial counterpart proportional to the grant received. Applications are accepted on a continuous-flow basis until 30 September 2026 (later extended to 2 October 2026) or until the budget is exhausted.

NIB, the multilateral development bank owned by the eight Nordic and Baltic member states, signed a EUR 11.4 million 10-year loan with Metrosert AS, Estonia's national testing, calibration and certification body, to finance a new Drone Technology Unit within Metrosert's Applied Research Centre in Tallinn. The unit will house nine laboratories to develop, validate and industrialise unmanned aerial, ground and maritime systems, with most planned activity explicitly defence-related, covering unmanned aviation, communications, navigation, flight physics and hardware security. NIB financing at preferential development-bank rates functions as a below-market state-backed subsidy to a strategic dual-use research facility; the unit is targeted to be fully operational by summer 2027 as part of a EUR 42.9 million total Applied Research Centre build-out.

The European Investment Bank signed guarantee agreements with Banco Santander totalling EUR 450 million on 29 January 2026, announced by EIB Group President Nadia Calviño during the Group's results presentation in Brussels. The guarantees are expected to unlock around EUR 900 million in new supply-chain financing for European companies: EUR 400 million for security-and-defence manufacturers (cybersecurity, surveillance, resilience and defence-technology suppliers) under the EIB's EUR 3 billion pan-European intermediated financing instrument for the defence industrial base, and EUR 500 million for companies in clean technologies, telecommunications and digital infrastructure via reverse-factoring supply-chain-finance instruments. Santander is reported as the fourth major European bank to sign under the defence-supply-chain programme, and the clean-tech/digital tranche contributes to the EIB Group's TechEU initiative.

On 9 January 2026, Canada's Minister of Industry Mélanie Joly announced Defence Industry Assist (DI Assist), a CAD 244.2 million (~USD 178.6 million) funding and advisory initiative delivered through the National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). The programme funds high-potential Canadian SMEs developing made-in-Canada defence and dual-use technologies, with the stated aims of reducing barriers to market entry, connecting recipients to procurement pathways, and strengthening domestic supply-chain collaboration. It sits within Canada's broader Defence Industrial Strategy (CAD 6.6 billion over five years from 2025-26) and Canada's push toward its 2% NATO defence-spending target.

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 200 million risk-sharing guarantee with Banco Santander SA on 19 December 2025 under the "Santander Pan-EU Defence Supply Chain" project (EIB ref. 20250338), against a total project cost of EUR 560 million. The instrument targets large corporate buyers and their suppliers whose main activity is in the security and defence sector, addressing financing gaps tied to information asymmetry, collateral constraints and credit-screening frictions. The EIB frames the operation under Article 309(c) TFEU, tying it to European strategic autonomy and defence-industrial resilience objectives; Global Trade Alert separately logged the transaction as a "red"-flagged state-linked lending-support intervention.

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 100 million multi-beneficiary intermediated loan with Piraeus Bank SA on 18 December 2025 under the "Piraeus Bank L4SMEs Security & Defence" project (EIB ref. 20250612, approved 12 November 2025). At least 50% of the on-lent amount must go to SMEs and mid-caps active in Greece's security and defence sector, addressing constrained access to finance these firms face due to sector-specific sensitivities and dual-use classification. The EIB describes it as its first-ever financing in Greece dedicated to the security and defence sector, part of a wider Pan-EU Security & Defence Lending Envelope; Global Trade Alert separately logged the transaction (reporting the headline amount as EUR 200 million) as a "red"-flagged state-linked lending-support intervention.

On 17 December 2025, the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), a federal Crown corporation, introduced a Defence Platform to deploy up to CAD 4 billion in financing, advisory services and investment solutions for Canadian companies in the defence and national-security sector. Of this, CAD 3.5 billion is financing and advisory support to help firms scale, diversify and enter defence supply chains, and CAD 500 million is investment capital deployed via the StrongNorth Fund, the Catalyst Innovation Fund, and targeted indirect investments in private funds aligned with Canada's defence and sovereignty priorities. The platform is anchored on a new CAD 1 billion capital injection into BDC announced in the 4 November 2025 federal budget.

On 15 December 2025, Canada's Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Evan Solomon, announced Phase 1 of the Canadian Quantum Champions Program (CQCP), awarding CAD 92 million (up to CAD 23 million each) to four domestic quantum-computing developers — Anyon Systems, Nord Quantique, Photonic, and Xanadu Quantum Technologies — to accelerate progress toward fault-tolerant quantum computers with industrial and defence applications. The program is designed to anchor quantum companies, talent and intellectual property inside Canada, moving systems beyond academic prototypes toward real-world testing and practical workloads, and sits within a broader ~CAD 334.3 million, five-year federal quantum-ecosystem commitment tied to Budget 2025 and Canada's National Quantum Strategy.

The Government of Ontario launched the Critical Minerals Processing Fund (CMPF), a CAD 500 million (~USD 364 million) provincial financial-support program to accelerate processing and refining capacity for critical minerals mined in the province, administered through Invest Ontario. The fund targets nickel, graphite, copper, cobalt and lithium, with a geographic emphasis on the Ring of Fire region northeast of Thunder Bay, and is intended to keep Ontario-mined minerals processed domestically rather than exported raw. It complements a separate CAD 3.1 billion package of loans, guarantees, grants and scholarships supporting Indigenous participation in the province's critical-minerals supply chain, and was first flagged in Ontario's 2025 Budget.

Innovate UK (part of UKRI) opened the Growth Catalyst - Investor Partnerships Round 2 competition on 10 December 2025, allocating a minimum of £100 million in grant funding to UK-registered SMEs at seed-to-Series-A stage. Grants (60-70% of project costs for feasibility and industrial-research projects; 35-45% for experimental development) must be matched by private investment from an Innovate UK-approved investor partner, ranging from an equal match to double the grant amount depending on project category. Applicants must align with one of the priority sectors named in the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy ("Invest 2035"): advanced manufacturing, clean energy, digital and technologies, defence, creative industries, life sciences, or the Battery Innovation Programme. The competition closes 3 February 2026.

The Canadian federal government announced a Strategic Response Fund contribution of up to CAD 210 million (~USD 151 million) toward a CAD 662 million project to expand semiconductor advanced-packaging and R&D commercialisation capacity at IBM Canada's Bromont, Quebec facility and the MiQro Innovation Collaborative Centre (C2MI). The federal contribution covers roughly one-third of total project cost. Ministers Mélanie Joly (Industry) and Evan Solomon (AI and Digital Innovation) announced the investment on 2025-11-28, framing it around domestic supply-chain resilience for AI/HPC, aerospace and defence, telecommunications, and automotive end-markets. The project is projected to create 75 new highly-skilled jobs and sustain over 1,000 existing jobs in the Bromont region.

On 26 November 2025 the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved a Rs 7,280 crore (~USD 800 million) scheme to establish 6,000 MTPA of integrated sintered Rare Earth Permanent Magnet (REPM) manufacturing capacity in India. The Ministry of Heavy Industries will allocate capacity to five beneficiaries (up to 1,200 MTPA each) via global competitive bidding. The package combines a Rs 6,450 crore sales-linked incentive (PLI-style, paid on REPM sales over 5 years) with a Rs 750 crore capital subsidy for facility build-out. The scheme runs 7 years from award (2-year gestation + 5-year disbursement) and covers the full value chain from rare-earth oxides through metals, alloys, to finished sintered Nd-Fe-B and SmCo magnets.

SETT, the operational vehicle of Spain's PERTE Chip programme, announced a EUR 9.5 million public investment in Ideaded, a Viladecans (Barcelona) company developing microchips on alternative substrates to silicon. The funding is earmarked to complete Spain's first pilot plant for silicon-alternative microchips, financed under the Plan de Recuperacion, Transformacion y Resiliencia (NextGenerationEU). Target output is 50 wafers/month (first wafer expected 2026) plus up to 300 million RFID antennas/year, aimed at advanced-computing, AI and defence applications.

Canada Growth Fund Inc. (CGF), an arm's-length investment vehicle wholly owned by the Government of Canada, announced on 31 October 2025 an approximately CAD 25 million (USD ~17.8M) investment in Rio Tinto's scandium oxide operation at its Critical Minerals and Metallurgical Centre in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec. The investment, structured as an equity-like financial royalty, will help expand the facility's nameplate capacity to 9 tonnes of scandium oxide per year. Alongside the investment, the Government of Canada agreed to an offtake agreement committing to purchase a volume of the scandium produced, and a marketing and storage agreement under which Rio Tinto will market and store scandium on Canada's behalf.

Natural Resources Canada's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Tim Hodgson, announced on 31 October 2025 conditional approval of up to CAD 36.3 million (USD ~25.8M) in Government of Canada funding for Ucore Rare Metals Inc.'s "Pathway to Samarium and Gadolinium Security" project, part of the first tranche of 26 investments and partnerships under the G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan. The package comprises up to CAD 26.3 million in non-repayable contributions from NRCan's Global Partnerships Initiative (GPI) and up to CAD 10 million from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario). Funding will scale up a commercial-scale RapidSX(TM) separation facility in Kingston, Ontario, intended to be the first dedicated samarium and gadolinium oxide production plant in North America, supporting samarium-cobalt magnet production for defence and other applications. Funding remains subject to due diligence and a Contribution Agreement.

The European Investment Fund (EIF), part of the EIB Group, committed EUR 30 million (~USD 35 million) at first closing on 17 September 2025 to Sienna Hephaistos Private Investments S.C.A. SICAV-RAIF, a Luxembourg-domiciled fund managed by Sienna Investment Managers (France). The commitment is the inaugural investment under the InvestEU Defence Equity Facility (DEF), an EU financial instrument created to close the financing gap faced by SMEs and midcaps in Europe's defence supply chain. Sienna Hephaistos is described as the first private credit vehicle in Europe dedicated exclusively to defence-sector financing, providing debt capital rather than equity to defence-linked suppliers. Global Trade Alert separately logs the transaction as a "red"-flagged state-linked equity/financial-investment-support intervention.

Bpifrance and Crédit Mutuel Arkéa's corporate banking arm launched "Avance Défense +," a EUR 500 million short-term working-capital financing facility dedicated to France's Base Industrielle et Technologique de Défense (BITD), split evenly with EUR 250 million from each institution. The mechanism lets defence prime contractors pay suppliers ahead of invoice due dates or defer their own payments while subcontractors are settled on time, and lets SMEs and mid-cap suppliers convert invoices into working-capital liquidity via the Tréso2 digital platform (built by Pytheas Capital). Over 4,500 BITD actors are eligible.

Spain's Council of Ministers approved Royal Decree 768/2025 (published in BOE no. 212, 3 September 2025), establishing the regulatory basis for a direct state loan of up to EUR 1,011,850,000 to Hisdesat Servicios Estratégicos SA to develop the PAZ 2 radar Earth-observation satellite program (two SAR satellites plus ground segment), replacing the PAZ 1 satellite whose service life ends around 2030-2031. The program runs 2025-2032 and is designed to maintain Ministry of Defence access to synthetic-aperture-radar imagery for national-security purposes, with Hisdesat providing observation capacity to the Ministry of Defence for an initial 10-year period per satellite once operational.

On 22 August 2025 South Korea's National R&D Program Evaluation Steering Committee, convened by MOTIE, finalized an exemption from the mandatory preliminary feasibility study (예비타당성조사 면제) for the "K-On-Device AI Semiconductor Technology Development" project, clearing the roughly KRW 689.15 billion (approx. USD 496 million) program to proceed toward FY2026 budget allocation without the standard multi-year vetting delay. The project funds full-stack development — custom AI chip design, software, and modules — across four demand-anchored industries: automotive (Hyundai Motor), IoT/home appliances (LG Electronics), machinery/robotics (Doosan Robotics, Daedong), and defense (Korea Aerospace Industries). MOTIE structured the program so end-user demand companies participated directly in project planning, pairing them with domestic fabless design and foundry manufacturing firms to build a domestic on-device AI semiconductor ecosystem, ahead of full budget confirmation and formal program launch.

The Chips Joint Undertaking, via Horizon Europe grant agreement 101213727 signed 19 June 2025, is co-funding "PIXEurope" (Advanced Photonic Integrated Circuits Pilot Line for Europe), the fifth EU Chips Act pilot line, coordinated by Fundació Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO, Spain) with a 19-entity, multi-country consortium. Total project cost is EUR 176.05m against EUR 88.03m in EU/Chips JU contribution, running 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2030. TNO (Netherlands) is a lead participant, receiving EUR 13.47m in net EU contribution (EUR 26.94m total eligible cost) to build a 6-inch indium-phosphide photonic-chip pilot manufacturing line at High Tech Campus Eindhoven — part of a wider EUR 193m Dutch national co-investment (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Chips JU, TNO, TU Eindhoven, University of Twente) targeting technological independence in photonic chips for telecom/6G, AI, quantum, defence and medical-diagnostics applications. Global Trade Alert logs a EUR 10.1m figure for the TNO tranche as a "red" state-act intervention (financial grant) on competitive-distortion grounds; this filing anchors on the CORDIS-published grant-agreement figures as the authoritative primary-source numbers.

On 18 June 2025 the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the BPCE banking group signed a EUR 300 million loan agreement to expand financing available to French small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) active in the security and defence supply chain, delivered through BPCE's Banque Populaire and Caisse d'Epargne networks. It is the first such operation the EIB has signed in France, and the second in Europe, under the EIB's Pan-EU Security & Defence Lending Envelope, which was expanded from EUR 1 billion to EUR 3 billion earlier in 2025 (a first tranche was signed with Deutsche Bank in Germany the preceding week). Funds are earmarked for SMEs investing in cybersecurity, surveillance, resilience, and defence technologies.

On 11 June 2025 the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Deutsche Bank signed a EUR 500 million framework loan agreement, enabling roughly EUR 1 billion in on-lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European security and defence supply chain, as well as military and police infrastructure such as training facilities. It is the first operation signed under the EIB's Pan-EU Security & Defence Lending Envelope, which was tripled from EUR 1 billion to EUR 3 billion around the same date, and was unveiled by EIB Group President Nadia Calviño at the European Defence and Security Summit in Brussels.

The UK Ministry of Defence announced a £5 billion technology investment package to accelerate domestic defence innovation, split between more than £4 billion (including over £2 billion in new funding) for autonomous systems and nearly £1 billion this Parliament for directed-energy weapons (DEW). The package funds acceleration of the DragonFire high-power laser toward fielding on Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers from 2027, establishment of a new Drone Centre to speed deployment of small uncrewed air systems informed by lessons from Ukraine, and is projected to create 300 skilled jobs on top of 200 already supported by DEW work. The announcement followed the government's Strategic Defence Review published the same day, which recommends UK forces adopt unmanned and autonomous systems at scale over the next five years.

The European Investment Fund (EIF), part of the EIB Group, and the European Commission announced a EUR 40 million (~USD 45.2 million) investment in Keen Venture Partners' European Defence and Security Tech Fund on 22 May 2025. The commitment is made under the InvestEU Defence Equity Facility (DEF), a EUR 175 million joint instrument (EUR 100 million from the European Defence Fund plus EUR 75 million from the EIF) created to close the equity-financing gap for early-stage European defence and dual-use technology companies through 2027. The Keen fund targets a final size of EUR 125 million and plans to back 20-25 early-stage startups across European NATO countries working on information superiority, cyber defence, robotics, AI, autonomous systems and space technologies. Global Trade Alert separately logs the transaction as a "red"-flagged state-linked financial-investment-support intervention.